Month: February 2018

Our high schools just aren’t pulling their weight when it comes to teaching about the Civil War and the role of slavery in shaping American society. A report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center on February 1st found that only 8 percent of high school seniors can identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War. Not only that, but two-thirds of high school seniors were unaware that it took a constitutional amendment to formally end slavery, and fewer than 1 in 4 students can correctly identify how provisions in the Constitution gave advantages to slaveholders. Educators all … Read more

Coming from a family with a military background and a brother currently serving in the United States Navy, the NFL protest of the flag has been very important to both my family and myself. Many NFL players, specifically Colin Kaepernick, decided to use their platforms to raise awareness about social issues that people of color face, such as police brutality, by not standing for the national anthem and instead taking a knee. Originally, I was extremely upset about this protest and the disrespect individuals were eliciting upon our nation’s flag. For me, the flag is meant to represent and appreciate … Read more

Beginning in August of 2016, Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, began a national anthem protest. Over the next 13 months, players from various teams in the NFL began sitting, kneeling and speaking out in acts joining Kaepernick. On August 26, 2016, Kaepernick exclaimed, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people … Read more

Models Sophie Applegarth and Julie Iovenitti dressed up as tennis players Venus and Serena Williams for a Christmas party through the use of blackface. “There is nothing racist about backing [your] favorite sport stars,” Applegarth and Iovenitti said in defense. Later, Applegarth put out a statement saying that they had no intent to be racist when they put these outfits on. Blackface has always been a contested issue in the United States. When these girls decided to smear their body with brown paint, they made the decision to perpetuate black stereotypes dating back to the 19th century. Although they though … Read more

Our country is an an extremely sensitive era in regards to racism, homosexuality, anti-semitism and a variety of other topics. People being accused of racism is becoming more of a normality, even considering the fact that racism has long been around even before the birth of our nation. It’s seeming as if it’s becoming the one and only accusation that is made, of white American’s, some having good reason, others have really no legitimacy at all. As if you turn on CNN, and the first thing you see is “ BREAKING NEWS: DONALD TRUMP IS A RACIST.” Surely, President Trump … Read more

“History is written by the victors,” Winston Churchill said. Another way to understand this power to define reality is through the construction of master narratives. A master narrative is majority-constructed script that specifies and controls how social processes are contextualized. An example of a master narrative that is perpetuated by our education system is one about the “discovery” of America by Christopher Columbus. When the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria landed on Plymouth Rock in 1492, America was already settled with indigenous tribes. These tribes had a different worldview than the Europeans who came to their land. Journal … Read more

There’s always a hair section at the supermarket: a section for hair — regular hair, normal hair, perhaps you would call it white women’s hair — and then a section dubbed “ethnic” for the other hair; it’s for the misunderstood hair, the hair that the simple “hair” section cannot provide shelf space for. The “ethnic” section is for black women’s hair. It is separate due to its other-ship. “Hair” and “Ethnic Hair” have been segregated, most presumably because of lingering racist ideologies that are still perpetuated even in the supermarket — it’s not a water fountain, but it’s something. We … Read more